The drug price blame game
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A group of lawmakers have introduced legislation that would break up health care conglomerates, aiming to rein in the power of pharmacy benefit managers. We’ll explain what PBMs do and why all sides of the health care industry are pointing fingers at one another over high costs. And, we’ll get into how the future of the Trump-era tax cuts could impact the federal deficit and why General Motors is ditching its robotaxi business. Plus, now’s your chance to talk with an AI Santa Claus.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “Yellen Talks Russia Sanctions, Tariffs and Deficit” from Bloomberg via YouTube
- “Yellen says Trump’s tariffs could derail US inflation progress, raise costs” from Reuters
- “Senators Warren and Hawley introduce a bipartisan bill to break up pharmacy-benefit managers” from CNBC via YouTube
- “Elizabeth Warren, Josh Hawley Co-Sponsor Bill to Break Up Giant Health Care Conglomerates” from The New York Times
- “What is a pharmacy benefit manager, anyway?” from Marketplace
- “GM to stop funding troubled Cruise autonomous vehicle unit, abandoning robotaxis” from CBS San Francisco
- “GM to Shut Down Its Cruise Robotaxi Project” from The New York Times
- “OpenAI introduces ‘Santa Mode’ to ChatGPT for ho-ho-ho voice chats” from Ars Technica
Tomorrow is our last episode of the year! Join us for our annual holiday party on “Economics on Tap.” The YouTube livestream starts at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time, 6:30 p.m. Eastern.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I've been seeing all these memes going around from one of your favorite movies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where apparently when they're all bored in class, the guy is giving a lecture on terror. |
| 0:12.1 | Yes. He's smooth holly, the whole deal. Yeah. |
| 0:14.8 | Yes. And so, like, everyone's like, it seems like we should have all listened in Ferris Bueller's class. |
| 0:21.1 | Yep. Yep. |
| 0:24.0 | Anyway. |
| 0:24.6 | Anyone? |
| 0:25.1 | Anyone? |
| 0:26.3 | Anyone? |
| 0:28.7 | Hey, everybody. |
| 0:29.4 | I'm Kyle Rizdahl. |
| 0:30.2 | Welcome back to Make Me Smart. |
| 0:31.4 | Where we make the day. |
| 0:32.5 | Makes sense. |
| 0:33.9 | And I'm Kimberly Adams. |
| 0:35.1 | Thank you for joining us on this Thursday, December the 12th. |
| 0:38.5 | We will do what we do on Thursday. Listen back to some clips from the big stories of the week and discuss. |
| 0:44.1 | Clip number one. Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen. Here we go. |
| 0:47.6 | Our budget proposes an additional $3 trillion of deficit reduction over 10 years. |
| 0:55.0 | And I think that's necessary to make sure that our fiscal path is sustainable. |
| 1:02.0 | Now, Congress hasn't really done anything to, you know, beyond what I've mentioned, |
| 1:10.0 | to improve the fiscal outlook, and I think that's a shame. |
| 1:15.5 | That was, of course, Dr. Yellen, Professor Yellen, Secretary Yellen, take your pick. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.